New study: Chocolate tames cough better than meds

The chief of respiratory studies at a university in Britain says the next time you have a cough, grab a chocolate bar instead of that medicine.

It’ll work better, or at least just as good.

It was the New York Post that reported on the comments from Alyn Morice, of the University of Hull in Yorkshire, England.

Morice explains chocolate “can calm coughs.”

“He says the results of the largest real-world study of an over-the-counter cough remedy ever undertaken in Europe have just come in. It proves that medicine that contains cocoa is better than the standard stuff,” the report said.

The details include the results of cases involving 163 patients who had “significant improvement” within two days of taking … chocolate.

“Scientists from Imperial College London previously found that a compound in cocoa was better at suppressing a cough than codeine,” the report said.

It’s already well-known that other sticky substances, like honey, can soothe a sore throat.

The idea immediately got the attention of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who says he’s known that for some time.

“Everybody thought that was making all that up as an excuse to have chocolate cake doughnuts. Folks, I don’t need an excuse to do anything I want. I’m an adult grown man. There’s nobody that can tell me ‘don’t eat that.’ And yet I was accused of making it up as an excuse.”

But he said, “I can tell you right now that there’s something to this. Not just doing something to get rid of vocal scratchiness, but also alleviating symptoms of a cold and a cough.”

The professor also talked with the Daily Mail, explaining while it “might sound like something out of Mary Poppins,” the evidence of help for a cough from a chocolate bar “is actually as solid [as] a bar of Fruit and Nut.”

He pointed out other researchers have found that theobromine, an alkaloid in cocoa, is better at suppressing the urge to cough than codeine, which is used in many cough medicines.

He advised to suck on a piece of chocolate, rather than drink hot chocolate, too.